For months, Shkreli has been doing something the pharmaceutical
industry at large has neglected to do: Exposing the
critical need for balance between the interests of shareholders
and patients.

Often that need plays out in the pricing of new, innovative
drugs. This is why it shocked no one when the Senate
recently released a report on how Gilead Sciences
put its profits first when pricing its new hepatitis C
cure at about $1,000 per pill, or $84,000 for a treatment.

The drug industry says there's a big difference between
Gilead's drug and Daraprim: Gilead's is a new development
and the price reflects the innovation and risk that went into
that, and encourages more of the same. Daraprim is a 62-year
old drug that Turing acquired earlier this year.

When Shkreli speaks bluntly about the needs of shareholders,
without the buzzwords and public relations scripts, he makes big
pharma very uncomfortable.

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Because he's telling the truth.

"It’s a business; we’re supposed to make as much money as
possible," Shkreli said at the Forbes
Healthcare Summit last week, where his attendance was
the buzz of the conference.

If anything, he said, he would've raised the price of Daraprim
higher.

After a lunch filled with healthcare leaders shaking their heads,
muttering unkind words or sharing bewildered expressions over
iced tea and baked fish, CEOs from some of the biggest
drugmakers companies took to the stage to put as much distance
between themselves and Shkreli as they could.

"Most of the drug CEOs I know, they're not themselves —
they're what people want them to be," he said at the time. "It's
pretty obvious of the different drug executives. They're old
white men, very buttoned up. They're appropriate, so to speak.
I'm a little bit more irreverent, and I'm not going to change
just because I have this job."

An
October protest of high drug prices, featuring Turing CEO Martin
Shkreli's face in a litter box.AP
Photo/Craig Ruttle, File

At the same conference where everyone's feathers got ruffled by
Shkreli's comments, the theme of the day seemed to be about
how the healthcare industry — not just pharmaceutical
companies, but all parts — need to innovate and catch up to other
industries that have made it so easy for consumers to have a
transparent picture of how much they're paying and what
they're getting into.

In other words, consumers deserve a better understanding of
what goes into the price of the drug they are
picking up at the pharmacy and why it's so high, or entirely
out of reach for some.

They also deserve to know why this is a uniquely American
problem. GSK CEO Witty made the point at the conference that his
company owns the global rights to Daraprim (they sold the US
rights to the drug in 2009), and it's sold at $20 a month in
England.

It's not unique to Daraprim, of course and there's many factors.
But a key one is that, unlike in England, the US government isn't
able to
negotiate the price of drugs.

Shkreli is an easy scapegoat, and he seems to like playing the
villain. When he punctuates his statements with that
incredible eye
roll of his, he surely gets under Big Pharma's skin the
way he does with many casual observers.

But we can't write him off. He doesn't exist in a vacuum. And he
might be the spark that gets us talking about how we can fix
the problem.